1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to telephone apparatus and, more particularly, to telephone apparatus such as a cordless telephone that is capable of multiple operational modes.
2. Description of the Background
Telephone systems capable of performing multiple functions and having different operational modes, such as a mobile telephone system, a cordless telephone, a so-called intelligent telephone, and the like are now widely used. When making an outgoing call, the telephone subscriber or user has to operate a number of pushbuttons or keys, for example, from 6 to 14 digits may have to be entered, which is very cumbersome for the user. To avoid this disadvantage, frequently this type of telephone is provided with an abbreviated dialing function and/or a so-called one-touch dialing function. In such abbreviated dialing function and one-touch dialing function, the user stores predetermined telephone numbers of persons to whom the user wishes to place a call in a memory of the telephone by operating the keys of the telephone set. Following such storage, the user can make an outgoing call by simply manipulating the keys of an abbreviated number or by only depressing the so-called one-touch dial key of the telephone set.
While this kind of telephone is very convenient once it is programmed, if the user buys another multi-function telephone set, or buys a different type of multi-function telephone, or if the user has to substitute another multi-function telephone set of the same type because of a malfunction of the already programmed telephone set, then the user has to manually input, one-by-one, all of the various data, which typically consists of a large number of telephone numbers for the outgoing calls that had been previously stored in the memory of the original telephone set. This re-entering of the plurality of phone numbers is very cumbersome and inconvenient for the user.